Abstinence may be ‘in’ again, but don’t expect big-time media to give it a fair hearing — GetReligion
Some three weeks have passed since the Supreme Court dumped Roe v. Wade and the torrent of angry pro-abortion-rights pieces fills the pages of nearly every news publication out there.
Outlets like the New Yorker, for instance, just keep pumping them out at a rate that you have to wonder when they turned into the public voice of Planned Parenthood. The editors are, of course, preaching to their choir of faithful readers.
I’ll also say that the anti-abortion folks have been totally unprepared for the never-ending waves of attacks and, yes, some of the lies that have followed the ruling. I’m seeing precious few of their opinions out there in the secular media. Maybe they’re being blocked; hard to tell.
The underlying assumption of the argument is the gospel of the Sexual Revolution — people have a right to sex whenever, however, wherever and with whomever. This right is a modern invention. Most societies attempted to chaperone their teens and encouraged their offspring married young. They also punished adultery quite severely. One’s ‘right’ to sex was hedged in enormously.
Today, the thought of limiting one’s desires is equal to an obscenity in our culture, which is why the antidote to abortion –- abstinence -– draws such howls of protest. How dare anyone tell us no? And so an Religion News Service led a story on abstinence with these paragraphs:
(RNS) — In front of a room of middle schoolers, a youth minister in rural North Carolina scribbles “hand-holding” and “kissing” on the bottom of a whiteboard. He then writes “intercourse” on the top of the board. Between the gap, he draws a thick line, indicating that sex before marriage — anything more than kissing, actually — crosses a literal line of purity.
It’s a scene the Rev. Amelia Fulbright, now the transitional pastor of the Congregational Church of Austin, recalls from her childhood, when she attended a ministry-led sex-ed course.
The reporter chose someone from a liberal denomination, or responded to a a PR message from that church, to arrive at this inevitable conclusion.
Sadly, religious groups aren’t the greatest when teaching about abstinence I will admit, but to stack the argument so early in the article is unfair.
As abortion bans fall into place around the country, there is likely to be a renewed focus on teen pregnancies and, with it, fresh battle lines drawn in a decades-old debate over how best to teach young people about sex: an abstinence-only approach or what is often called “comprehensive sex ed.”
For her part, Fulbright is an advocate for comprehensive sex education, which covers a range of issues relating to the physical, biological, emotional and social aspects of sexuality, including gender identity, various sexual orientations and contraceptives.
“I don’t think it’s possible to make a sound biblical case against abortion or comprehensive sex ed,” said Fulbright. “Bodily autonomy, personal conscience and dignity are a big part of my Christian faith.”
This is, of course, one side of the debate that is (supposedly) the subject of this news report. And there is no rejoinder challenging this kind of statement about abortion? Actually, the Bible has plenty to say on the personhood of the unborn. There are many voices available to discuss that in a wide range of religious traditions.
The story did offer one alternate argument, as seen here:
Lori Kuykendall, CEO of Beacon Health Education Resources in the North Texas suburb of Irving, said she believes abstinence-focused education, sometimes called “optimal health” or “risk-avoidance” curriculum, has a positive, holistic effect on students.
“Abortion is a decision after several other decisions have been made,” said Kuykendall. …
Abstinence education, she argues, helps young people make choices far ahead of those they would face with an unintended pregnancy.
“We’re farther upstream in a more proactive approach to help young people not get to that point.”
In other words, if you don’t attend that high school kegger (which is what they were called when I was young), you won’t get drunk in the first place which tends to lead to other things. That was the motive back then to get kids into sports; the logic was to keep ‘em too busy to waste time on the wrong kind of parties.
Well, expect more attacks on abstinence, already the whipping boy in this short-circuited journalism debate.
No one seems to think that teens CAN choose not to have sex; it is thought that the urge is too strong for anyone to realistically resist. The idea of saying “no” to sex feels like the ultimate blasphemy toward this age of being all you can be. Thus, there really isn’t a need for journalists to explore the kinds of traditional religious believers — again, in various faiths — who are rebels against the dominant culture.
Covering both sides of that debate would be interesting, to say the least. Why not try it?
